


Imperfect Specimen

by Lacinia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:32:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacinia/pseuds/Lacinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD makes a crucial error, a desperate ploy is undertaken, and Yelena, as always, seeks vengeance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Endings

**Author's Note:**

> See end for trigger warnings for entire work.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawkeye makes a different call.

She’s cornered, literally cornered: backed up against the intersection of a pair of splintery warehouse walls.  She’s out of bullets and options, so she drops her handgun and raises her hands in useless surrender.  She doesn’t beg for her life, just asks a question that’s been bothering her a while.  “How did my mother really die?”

Ilya considers her, not lowering his pistol.  But finally he answers, seeing as it will cease to matter in a second or two.  “She tried to run,” he says.

“How many—,” she starts to ask, and the left side of Ilya’s head explodes into gore.

She stands there, mildly splattered with blood, as a half-dozen men wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles storm in.  They’re followed by a three men and one Scandinavian amazon wearing suits and holding handguns. 

“Recall Hawkeye,” one of the suits barks into a radio, and she just stands there, not moving or saying anything, until one of the suits steps in front of her.  “Ms. Romanov, we understand you’ve had a falling out with your employer.  We are willing to intercede on your behalf.”

She’d had her death right in front of her, as real as anything.

“Black Widow?” another of the suits asks, voice uncertain. 

She ceases to stare at where Ilya had been standing, and shifts her gaze to the man who had spoken.  “Who are you?” she asks pleasantly.  She’s not interested in fighting, not with the number of guns pointed her way, not if she can talk her way out.  

“SHIELD, ma’am,” he says, and she looks down at the fine flecks of blood dotting her hands. 

“We can talk,” she says, and doesn’t resist when they cuff her hands behind her back and throw a bag over her head. 

When they pull it off, she’s sitting across an interrogation room table from the Scandinavian amazon.  She’s tall and slender, and very beautiful, in an austere way.  Her jacket has been carefully folded on the back of the chair behind her, revealing a sleeveless blouse of silver-blue silk and a slender gold chain wound twice around her wrist. “My name is Agent Stone, I’m conducting this negotiation.”  She crosses her long legs.  “What do you like to be called?”

“Romanov is fine.”

“We do know your full name, Natalya Alianovna.  Natalya?  Natasha?”

They watch each other for a long moment.  Finally, “You can call me Natasha,” Galina says.


	2. The Fourteenth Black Widow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a past.

When Galina is twenty-one, Black Widow thirteen dies in Paris, bleeding out in a dirty alley.  A replacement is called for, and Galina is the best the Red Room has. 

To be named a Black Widow is the greatest honor a daughter of the Red Room may aspire to: there is but one a generation, and she is the best of all her sisters.  A Black Widow is respected, treasured.  Her talents are not wasted on tasks beneath her, and she is sacrificed only in the direst need.  Her name is remembered, and her life is monumented.  To be a Black Widow is to live forever in the memory of your sisters.

Her entire life, Galina has striven for this.  She has clawed, and struggled, and given up so much in chase of it.  She has seen friends lost, and her whole childhood consumed, and yet in finally having reached it, she feels no pride, no relief.

She feels like she has nowhere left to go.

 

 

When Galina is eighteen, she is on the cusp of graduation.  This is not to say that she is naive: she has been in the field many times.  She has fought for her country, bled for her country, killed for her country.  Graduation means she has reached the point where the Red Room no longer has anything to teach her, and she will begin to work in the field full time. 

Her instructors no longer accept slip-ups.  She is expected, at her level, at her age, to be perfect in every respect.  No more allowances are made for a trace of Russian accent in her English, or for failing to block a strike, or for missing the red circle at the center of the target.

What happened to the girls who weren’t perfect?

 

 

When Galina is thirteen, there are dozens near her age.  So many that their instructors confused them, called Galina Irina and Viktoria and Aleksandra. 

Girls disappear, in the Red Room.  The students that are too rebellious, too lazy, or too squeamish are thinned from the herd.  Galina understands.  If they will not be first-rate intelligence operatives, than how will the costs of their keeping and educations be defrayed?  If they are not useful to their Motherland, than what is their purpose?

In the Red Room, she only has one real friend; Svetlana, a sixty-two who would tell fairytales after lights-out.  Not just proper fairytales, of Koshei and Maria Morevna and Prince Ivan, but ones she weaved herself, of talking birds and singing stones and gifts from kind witches.

Sveta disappears before Galina makes fourteen.

 

 

When Galina is five, she is deemed old enough to begin Red Room instruction, and so leaves the house where she had been raised.  The woman Galina called Mama she would never see again.  The man she called Papa was a KGB officer who had volunteered for the duty of her care.  She didn’t miss him—he was always aloof, never kind.  Too aware she was an asset and not a daughter.

But his wife, his wife, she had loved her, Galina would swear.  She had given her sweets, and brushed her hair, and bought her toys.  And Galina never knew her name.

 

 

When Galina is born, no one expects much of her.  She is just another model nineteen, her genetic code containing only a few modifications.  No fancy enhancements, just a touch of extra speed, a little additional strength, and slightly faster healing. 

Her sisters, all later models, have a wealth of unusual talents: increased cognitive abilities, night vision, sensitivity to infrasound.

The model nineteen is the oldest model still in production, which is to say, the closest genetically to their mother, the original Black Widow, Natalya Alianovna Romanova.


	3. Storyteller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The key to a perfect lie.

What would any intelligence agency, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, do to have Natalya Romanova on their side?  Much more than they would do for one of her daughters.  Galina’s value depreciates each time SHIELD learns of another of her sisters.

And a second, less selfish reason: nothing would endanger her sisters more than if the world discovered their existence.  The second they became a liability, even Romanova’s daughters would be sacrificed.

Galina allows SHIELD to believe that she is her mother.

“Well, Natasha,” Stone says, still in that faux-casual manner, calculated to annoy.  “You are a legend.”  She lays out a series of photographs, the oldest dating to 1952.  “And you have been for a long time.”

That must be the original Black Widow, Galina notes with interest, but carefully doesn’t let her eyes rest on it any longer than the half-second she devotes to each of the others.

“How was your lifespan extended?” Stone asks.  “Genetic modification?  Cryogenics?”

Galina looks past her, at the suit jacket folded on the back of her chair.  Expensive, she notes.  “That is very valuable information,” Galina says.  “I need assurances.  Promises.  What are you prepared to offer?”

“Many things,” Stone says, “Within reason.  What do you need?”

And the negotiation begins.

Galina agrees to work with SHIELD, but she insists on maintaining a degree of autonomy.  She will make her bargains, but she won’t be a betrayer of her people, a traitor to her nation.  She won’t be a mere tool, to be used and used and thrown away, when convenient. 

 

 

Stone is tasked with being her liaison: familiarizing her with SHIELD’s rules and regulations, making introductions, acquiring any weapons or resources she needs.  She preps Galina for missions, and makes sure she’s taken care of after.  She’s also supposed to interview her about her past.  But Galina stalls, gives them useless details, says things like, "What does it matter?" and "It was a long time ago," or "Did SHIELD bring me in to reminisce or to work?"

Eventually, the interviews disappear from her schedule and Galina thinks she's won some sort of reprieve, but a few days later she receives a summons to appear in front of the Operations Director.  She has to hike up to the upper levels to get to the sound-proofed, high-security offices used by the upper echelons of SHIELD administration. 

Agent Pritchard is a lean, gray man with a mournful mustache.  Past sixty, he stands out in an organization that leans young, but as Director of Operations, he’s third in command of the entire organization. 

"You wanted to talk to me?" she asks. 

"We had a deal, Agent Romanov," he says.  She keeps her face impassive, but her mind flickers, all unwilling to the public execution she witnessed when she was seven years old.  A model twelve who she hadn't known, shot in the head while she kneeled in the mud.  They'd left her to rot in the courtyard.  Galina had seen ravens take her eyes.

Whatever her crime had been, it was surely less serious than working for the enemy. 

"I've kept up my end," she says.

"You aren't talking to Agent Stone."

She sits down.  "Stone is an idiot.  Who's really in charge of my case?"  No way an agent that junior is put in charge of recruiting an asset as valuable as the Black Widow.

"You're talking to the head of operations," he says. 

"Yes," she says, "not personnel.  You shouldn't be anywhere near recruitment.  So my case agent, whoever he is, has you doing the run-around on me for him.  He can't outrank you, so tell me, how did he get that kind of pull?"

He holds up a finger, and picks up the phone.  "Coulson," he says, "you've been made."

Twenty minutes later she's staring across a conference room table at an unassuming man in a slightly crumpled suit. 

"You don't want to talk about the past," he opens with, when it becomes clear silence isn't going to discomfit her. 

"Well, it's over," she says, projecting boredom.  In training, if you didn't lie convincingly you didn't eat.  She shouldn't feel afraid that he'll see through her.

"Sometimes," Coulson says, "the safety of my people will depend on the information you can give us.  I'm all for privacy, Agent Romanov, but certain things I cannot abide."

Galina looks in his eyes, sees a fight she will not win, and takes a leap.  "My intel," she says, "isn't as reliable as you think."

He folds his hands.  "What are you saying?" he asks, voice mild.

She stares him down.  Don't ever seem too eager.

"I'm going to need you to spell it out," he says.

She takes a deep, steadying breath.  "The Red Room has access to Department X technology.  Have you seen what they can do?  They have advanced cybernetics.  Genetic modification.  Memory alteration."

"You suspect your memory was altered?"

She squeezes her hand until her nails bite into her palm.  "Certain things are missing.  Certain things are impossible."  She clenches her jaw, then tilts up her chin at him.  "Why do you think I ran?"

The best lies are not wholly manufactured.  Galina remembered when she was a child, how she had had no power at all in the world, how she strived and scrabbled and ached to be the best because she was terrified of the consequences of failure.  Galina looked up at him with her child's frightened eyes and says somebody played in her brain, and Coulson is sharp, but he's only a man.  Men are weak, and vulnerable.  A Black Widow quickly finds her marks' weaknesses and exploits them ruthlessly, and Coulson is _kind._

A good lie is more than just plausible. Your mark should want to believe it, in the marrow of his bones.  It should line up, effortlessly, with how he believes the world to be.  He knew they had the technology, but what sold it was how much he wanted to believe that she was good, and wronged, and the Russians whose interests were aligned against his were bad, and cruel.

Galina, watching his eyes very closely, sees the exact second he swallows it.

Things are easier, after that.  They stop asking about her past, and when they do, they do it gently.  Details Galina can’t remember or was never told she can easily claim to no longer know.  The SHIELD agents she works with begin to treat her less like an untrustworthy ally and more like one of their own.  She goes further, and alludes, in a roundabout way, as though it's the last thing she wants to say, to the fact that they had her when she was a child, and they _hurt_ her.  And Coulson may be hardened by the life he has chosen, but in the end he is not a man who can endure the suffering of another.  Especially not a woman, especially not the child she was. 

And even when she slips it aids her ploy. 

Coulson sees more than Galina wants him to, despite her care.  She hides things, but she forgets that he will be able to infer from absence.  In the field, she is perfect, confident, deadly.  Out of the field she’s uncertain.  She hesitates.

Coulson knows fear when he sees it. 

Everyone believes her, for far longer than Galina had dared to think she might get away with it.  And she thinks, SHIELD is not so bad.  The work they do is often laudable.  She could stay, oh, at least another few months, she thinks, before she’s ready to go.

Six months pass, and Galina hasn’t budged.

Nine, and her preparations are in place, but why would she run when she feels safe here?

A year, and Yelena shoots her.


	4. The White Widow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An individual with a mutation that provides a selective advantage may found a line which will compete with and eventually replace the parent line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black widow spiders belong to the genus _Latrodectus_. However, the only member of the genus present in Russia is _Latrodectus pallidus_ , the white widow spider, which is unusual among the widow spiders in that it has a pale coloration.

At birth it was evident that Yelena was no ordinary forty-eight.  The doctor delivering her noticed that her sparse fuzz of hair on her head was not the ordinary blood-honey of the newborn daughters, but a nearly colorless blonde.  There were worries that the process had gone awry or somehow failed.  A live birth of an inferior specimen would have been an unforgiveable waste of resources, but genetic tests revealed that she only deviated from the strain template at a single locus. 

At some point between the zygote stage and birth, Yelena underwent a random mutation.  A gene for hair pigment was disabled.  Among all the uniformly redheaded daughters, Yelena stuck out, singularly corn silk blonde.

Another girl, growing up so visibly different would have been tormented.

Yelena was _feared_. 

 

 

In the Red Room, the weak don’t survive.  Some girls give up, some girls won’t stop crying at night.  They fail out of the program, and Yelena didn’t waste her time wondering what happened to them.

Yelena just got _hungry._ She wanted more than just to be the best of her year, more than just one of the Black Widows.  She wanted her record to stand for fifty years, at least.  Yelena wanted to be the last Yelena, her name retired in honor and bestowed to no future sisters.  She wanted her inheritors to aspire to her heights, to say, ah, Yelena, she was as good as our mother.  Maybe better.

 

 

At ten, Yelena was showing great promise.  At fourteen, her instructors were describing her as an up-and-comer and her superiors were taking note of her talents.  At eighteen years old, Yelena had recently graduated, and although she had limited field experience, her scores were the highest ever, higher even than the original Black Widow’s.

When she was eighteen, the fourteenth Black Widow, Galina-5, committed an unprecedented act of treachery and defected to SHIELD.

At nineteen years old, Yelena, like every other girl in the Red Room, had been harshly interrogated. Eventually, their superiors were convinced that Galina acted alone, without help from any of her sisters.  The students of the Red Room, those that survived the purge, are now heading back to the field.

Yelena receives her orders: she is to find and kill Galina-5, the traitor.  She is chosen for this, she is told, because she has always been loyal, and because she is the best. 

She is the fifteenth Black Widow. 

 

 

Because of the importance of her mission, Yelena has access to all of the Red Room resources, and by extension, all of the Foreign Intelligence Service’s resources.  Even so, it takes her a long time to track Galina to the Chicago SHIELD base.

When Yelena sees her, smiling as she talks to a neighbor before she heads into work, like she didn’t betray everything and everyone she owes, she feels angry, all over again.  She hears her heart in her chest and her ears, and she is glad she was chosen for this mission.

Because she wants the bitch to die, and die hard.

 

 

Galina lives in a well-guarded compound: residence used by SHIELD primarily for protective custody.  However, there are also a number of SHIELD agents and civilian personnel in residence, who cannot or choose not to take care of their own security matters.  Yelena bristles that any sister of hers, a daughter of the greatest spy that ever lived, would consent to being so coddled.  Has she no _pride_?

When she’s away from the compound, Galina spends most of her time at the base, which is even more formidably defended.  When on mission, she leaves directly and without warning from the base.  Her missions are of unpredictable length, and following her on them is risky. 

Yelena has been told she is reckless, but in this job she takes exquisite care.  Galina must not get wind of them.  The little coward will run, and she cannot be permitted to escape justice.

 

 

In the end, Yelena’s plan is simple.  Yelena chooses the risk that Galina will in time detect them, and run, over the risk that she will escape a poorly constructed trap.  Galina has a weakness for the tastes from home: there is a Russian bakery, a specialty tea shop, and a Ukrainian restaurant that she has been known to frequent, but not on any sort of regular schedule.

Yelena chooses the restaurant, where Galina dines in a small back room with three exits, but no street visibility.  She ensures the cooperation of the restaurant’s owners by threatening the wife’s brother, who’s in prison in Minsk.  The stakeout is long and grueling: they must wait hours and days and yet be ready at a moment’s notice to face a Black Widow.

It takes three weeks, and then, without doing anything so foolish as calling ahead, Galina comes in, discreetly hands the owner a wad of cash, and heads to the back room.  They let her sit down, pour herself some tea, and eat a single blini before Yelena steps into the room and shoots her cleanly through the abdomen as she jumps to her feet.

Galina keeps hold of her gun as she falls to her knees, and gets off one misaimed shot before Yelena reaches her.  The bullet grazes Yelena, but doesn’t stop her from kicking the gun out of Galina’s hand, and grabbing her by the throat and slamming the back of her skull into floor.  With Galina momentarily dazed, she pulls a syringe from her sleeve and neatly injects her in the muscle of her upper arm.  Galina’s struggles fade as the paralytic takes effect, and when she is wholly incapacitated Yelena puts a pad on her wound and wraps her belly in bandages so she doesn’t bleed out too soon.

She settles down.  “Now,” she says, “we have many things to discuss, sister.”


	5. Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There can only be one Black Widow.

Galina tried to breathe shallowly, but even so the pain crawls up her sides, reaches up into her brain and threatens to tear away every bit of professional remove she has built over the years.

“Stop fighting so much,” Yelena says.  “Just tell me what you told SHIELD, and I’ll give you a cleaner death than you deserve.”

Galina struggles, as uselessly as a pinned butterfly.  She’s no longer the fourteenth Black Widow, or a patriot, or anything else.  She once threw away everything for a chance for freedom, and now she would do it again just to survive.  Galina never thought of herself as anything special.  She was too conscious of the almost-as-good girls that surrounded her, too conscious of the weight of her legacy.  Chemicals paralyzing her unfaithful body, Galina doesn’t feel strong or dangerous or like one of the foremost spies in the world.  She feels young, and scared, and, oh god, does she ever not want to die.

“I’ll tell you everything,” she says, unashamedly cowardly in the face of death.  “Just let me go.  I won’t go back to SHIELD.  I’ll spend the rest of my life in a small town, and no one will ever know, Yelena.”

Yelena crouches down.  “Your sins do not get forgiven,” she says. 

Galina looks up at her.  All she wants is one droplet of pity, one ounce of humanity she can touch.  But Yelena is the most faultlessly loyal person she has ever met.  She will never be able to convince her.  The only thing in Yelena’s eyes is disgust.  Galina looks up, sees her own death, accepts it, and does what she can.  “They thought I was Mother,” she says.  “I let them think it was true.  They don’t know anything about the Black Widow program.”

“You are pathetic.”

“I deserved a real life,” Galina says, and closes her eyes, waiting for the bullet.

“I have not been a good mother,” a voice says, “but I draw the line at letting my daughters kill each other.”  Galina’s eyes fall open in surprise, and she sees an unfamiliar sister.

“Who are you?” Yelena demands.  “What are you doing here?  This was supposed to be a solo assignment.”

Galina’s mind moves too slowly.  Her words don’t make any sense…

“I’m not one of your sisters,” she says.  “And if the girl wants out, she gets out.”

“Natalya Alianovna?” Galina whispers. 

She crouches down.  “I hear someone using my name, I get curious.”

“Natalya is dead!” Yelena yells.  “Our mother was a hero and she die—.”

Galina spent her entire childhood in combat training.  She was the best of her generation, good enough to be awarded the rank of Black Widow, but still she as never seen anything like Natalya.  Before Yelena can react she has her gun.  Yelena tries to counterattack, but Natalya pistol-whips her, and the fifteenth Black Widow, the best of her generation, crumples like so much wet newspaper.

“What did she give you?” Natalya asks her, like it was no big deal. 

“Modified curare,” Galina answers.  She recognizes the particular flavor of the paralysis; she’s had this drug used on her before.

Natalya injects her with the antidote, from Yelena’s kit.  She helps her to her feet.  “There’s money and a clean ID in my bag,” she says.  “Take it.  Live a civilian life, like you want.  I’ll take care of this,” she says, nodding at Yelena, “and SHIELD.  No one will come after you.”

“Thank you,” Galina says.

A very long time ago, Natasha ran away, knowing her daughters would be punished for it, knowing that they would be killed if they washed out of training or showed any signs of her rebellious nature.  It was an act of monstrous cruelty and utter desperation, sacrificing her chances to help her daughters.  For this particular girl, she can make up for that, a little.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here before,” she says.  “Good luck with your new life.”

“Thank you,” Galina says again, hand clutched to her bullet wound, tears in her eyes. 

Natasha nods, unable to swallow gratitude for her greatest failure, and turns back to the mess.  There’s an easy way to stop SHIELD and the Red Room from looking for Galina: all she has to do is convince them she never disappeared. 

Natasha goes back to Yelena’s kit, and carefully measures out and delivers a cocktail of drugs that will leave Yelena’s short-term memory hazy, muddled, and unreliable.  She’ll dump the girl somewhere she’ll be found, and all that will be assumed is that she failed.  It will be Galina who killed the support staff, but spared the life of Yelena, to whom she owes a familial obligation. 

The second part is harder.  Natasha has to infiltrate SHIELD.  As Natasha Romanov.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: blood, murder, references to child abuse.


End file.
